Benjamin Blake's Rapture
by sonotfastfood
Summary: The building of Rapture is an exciting opportunity for those asked to play a part; but how will this ultra-capitalist utopia play out for those caught up in its founding? Benjamin Blake's audio diaries between March 1947 and summer 1959 reveal the answer.
1. 16th of March, 1947

Disclaimer: I do not own Bioshock or any of its related trademarks. This is an imagining of the ascent and decline of the city of Rapture through the eyes of those who came to build it - I try to stick as close to the historical timeline as referred to in-game, but I have made some changes of my own. :)

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16th of March, 1947

Benjamin Blake: Hello? Hello? Is this thing on? How can you tell…?

Technician: When the green light is on, the Audio-Diary is recording sir.

Benjamin: Oh, thanks son. What do I say…My name is Benjamin Blake, and I'm with my family on board Andrew Ryan's freighter, the _Tethys_, off the coast of Greenland. And soon we'll be going to a new world…

Barbara Blake: Honey, what are you doing talking to yourself?

Benjamin: The crew gave these things to us! You can record your voice on it like a little phonograph and play it back later.

Barbara: But it's so small! How do they do it?

Benjamin: I just don't know. Here honey, say something!

Barbara: Oh, Benny don't.

Benjamin: Come on darling!

Barbara: Oh…I'm Barbara Blake. Um…we have a daughter, Roberta. She's four now…

Roberta Blake: Daddy, I'm cold!

Benjamin: Oh I know Bobby. Come here; let me pick you up.

Roberta: It's colder here than Mass-uh-too-setts!

Barbara: Honey? You want to take this diary thing? Is it still on?

Benjamin: Yup, if the green light is on its recording our voice. Here, you take Bobby…there we are. I guess I should explain why we're way out in the North Atlantic. I'm the on the Board of Directors of the Iowa State Agricultural College, but a few months ago I was approached by multi-millionaire Andrew Ryan. Mr Ryan has a revolutionary idea; an entirely self-supporting city on at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. I've been called upon to help plan, construct and run the food production plants. I thought it would be impossible, but some of the plans which Ryan showed me…well, I've never dreamed of such things. So, we came out to Massachusetts, pretending to be on a family holiday, and came out to the beach in the middle of the night with our luggage three days ago – and here we are! On our way down to Rapture!

Roberta: Will Grandpa and Grandma come visit us?

Benjamin: Er…

Barbara: Maybe Grandpa and Grandma will come live with us in a little while. Come on darling, let's go and see if there are any fish around.

Roberta: Fishes!

Benjamin: The truth is that Rapture is a secret project. Ryan seems pretty distrustful even of the US government. He says that product of a man's labour should belong to that man and no one else, so he's definitely at odds with Roosevelt! But we were sworn to secrecy as part of being involved in this grand undertaking, so we couldn't tell our parents or our friends. It's sad, but there you are. How else am I going to be able to raise cattle or grow potatoes under the sea? The challenges are huge, but the opportunity is a once in a lifetime!

Barbara: Honey! Honey! Come and look at this!

Benjamin: Everyone's hurrying to the port side; the engines have stopped. What's all the commotion about? Barbara! What's going on…

Barbara: It's the Lighthouse!

Roberta: Lighthouse! Lighthouse!

Crewman: All right folks! That is your doorway to Rapture – please take your numbers for the bathyspheres so that we can get you shuttled down there in an orderly fashion. Drop the gangway!

Benjamin: This lighthouse is beautiful! It's as tall as a church steeple, and it glitters in the Arctic sun like a…like an iceberg!

Barbara: You're so fanciful dear. You ought to have been a poet!

Benjamin: No room for poets until there's food and air and homes down there Barb…number thirty-four?

Crewman: Yup mister, number thirty-four. Now step lively, time to disembark, thank you!

Barbara: Come on Benny, let's get inside. It'll be warm and there's no sense sitting out in the cold. Oh! That's one of those television sets that they keep talking about. This is just like the movies…

Voice of Andrew Ryan: Hello, my friends.

Benjamin: That's Ryan himself!

Voice of Andrew Ryan: I regret to say that I cannot welcome you personally to my new city. The responsibility of the co-ordination of raw materials and funds towards the Rapture Project keep me in New York for the time being. Besides, it is important that you, my dear friends, my experts, are given primary access to resources to create my masterpiece. Over the past months, excavation and building teams have cleared the site and set up initial living areas provided with oxygen, electricity and desalinated water. However, regular supplies from the surface are still required to keep the city running.

My friends, your part in this great endeavour cannot be emphasised enough. To give our infant city true sustainability is a necessary task that we must accomplish, so that men may enjoy the fruits of their labours for generations to come. To enjoy those fruits which the succubi of the state, the church and the law would suck straight from our veins! Yes, your task is a magnificent one. To create paradise at the bottom of the sea.

And now, friends, give yourselves up to Rapture….

Technician: Number one! Calling group number one to the bathyspheres! Number one? Where is group number one please?


	2. 27th of April, 1947

27th of April, 1947

Benjamin: It's been quite a while since my last diary – but so much has been going on since then! Rapture isn't much just now, but with our hard work it will soon be a great metropolis – but how? That's the question. Rome wasn't built in a day, after all. And Ryan wants so much!

I'll start by telling you what is here before I tell you what will be. The city will sit on a huge levelled plain, some six miles wide by fourteen miles long. Right now, there's just the turbine station sitting atop the main volcanic vents – that's how we generate electricity you see. Great bubbling jets of superheated water coming up from the earth's crust turn the turbines and hey presto! Electricity! The turbine station was the first thing to be built – next, the desalination plant and the living quarters. These two blocks sit right alongside one another with the bathysphere docks at either end, and let me tell you, it's noisy! The tanks just keep churning all day and night, storing up fresh water in their storage tanks. Some people say they can't sleep because of it, but I don't notice – I've never worked so hard since I was a boy on the family farm! But I digress…

The living quarters aren't as bad as some of the ladies here would have you believe. Sure, it's cramped and a bit smelly, but they're warm and clean too. Every family gets its own little set of rooms, a kitchen, a bedroom and a bathroom. They're all connected through a central leisure area – there's not much there though, a few ping pong and snooker tables, some kids toys and some old books that people have brought with them. Every family gets the same rations from the supply submarines that come down here every three days or so – bread, tins of milk powder, baked beans, corned beef and canned fruit for the most part! Plus we get soap, shampoo, toothpaste and washing powder – life isn't luxurious, but it's not bare-bones neither!

There's about six hundred families here right now, from all over the world. There's regular Americans just like us, and English, and German, and Russkies. They make up the majority, but there are others – two Indian families, some Irish, Mexicans, Swedes and so on. I can't say there isn't just a little tension in the air sometimes – let's not forget that the war's only been over a year or so now. Forgiving and forgetting ain't easy for some – particularly among the German and Russian families. There's little doubt that all of them lost somebody in the fighting…

Still, we're a happy bunch in general. We get along. The children get taught by an old Greek schoolteacher called Kosmo Giannopoulos and his assistant Kristjana Leifsdóttir three times a week. They get taught math and science, but nothing like geography or history or anything like that. They're taught English, but they read about Greek myths…I wouldn't exactly say it's a comprehensive education…Roberta comes home and recites the mythology of ancient Greece to us – she's telling us the bedtime stories! Although it's an odd curriculum, it has to be said.

But back to my work. While most of the men here are construction workers, architects and engineers, I'm one of the few guys who work in food production. As head of the food production plants I've been teamed up with Doctor Julie Langford, an esteemed horticulturalist. It was she who set up the oxygenation facility that had been christened Arcadia – ah but I forgot to mention that didn't I! There is so much to talk about down here.

The day after we arrived Dr Langford and I had to put on pressurised suits and walk across the seabed to the huge shed that is now the food production test area. It's such a queer feeling to be walking across the sandy bed of the ocean with waves booming miles above your head. Of course, you can't see the sunlight, so electric cables for lighting have been strung out between the living quarters and the test area. There are shoals of fish darting around and whales swim placidly by overhead.

"Seems we won't be short of a good sardine anyway." I said to Langford over the radio, and she said that while this was true, Andrew Ryan wants to sit down to a good steak with peppercorn sauce the moment he gets down here.

The test area is made up of six huge bays, and when I got there four were being filled with soil and compost ready for planting. The others have concrete floors, bales of straw were being packed into them ready for their animal occupants and they are subdivided into different pens. Overhead, huge sets of bright solar lamps shine while we work. Langford showed me her specimens; potted trees, planters of vegetables and trays of germinating seeds. I had lots of questions for her. How successful is germination in this environment? How do the plants react to the use of desalinated water? Do the yields produced outweigh the costs in growing them? Of course, the oxygenation facility has proved a test case in many respects, but mass production of fruits and vegetables will need further, more rigorous testing.

I worked with her on the four test beds, planting onions, leeks, carrots and potatoes. So far, we have an eighty percent success rate in germination! This is encouraging, but we need to fully maximise yields so that we can feed the families in the living quarters. Looking after the plants is a full time job, but luckily since the animals arrived more helpers have also come down from the surface to aid us.

The animals! It was a grand day when the animals were shipped down here in the submarines last week. One hundred head of cattle, and five hundred chickens all tripping out of the loading bays and running off everywhere. We had to enlist some of the women and older children in helping us herd them into the pens and divide them properly – forty cows for milking, the rest for breeding; and the chickens divided equally, one group for eggs and one group for chicks, along with five bulls and ten roosters.

Once they were settled in we shipped all the children over and allowed them to walk around and look at the animals in their pens. Of course, it has to be understood that the animals are not pets, but it does the kids good to see where their food will come from. For now, we're still receiving supplies until we're sure that we can breed healthy specimens.

All in all, it looks bright for the future of the first eggs and the first steaks produced under the sea. Oops, Barb's calling me for dinner –


	3. 1st of May, 1947

1st of May, 1947

Barbara: Wait…is it on…?

Mrs Limnitz: Yes, yes, yes, look there is the green light. We're recording!

Mrs Di Montello: My Stevie is always talking into one of those things, he just won't shut up about the new architectural plans that those Wales guys are drawing up. They're supposed to record the process of building Rapture, but personally, I think it's all bullshit.

Mrs Simpson: Erica!

Mrs Di Montello: What?

Mrs Fitzpatrick: Barbara, you're our chairwoman! Say something!

Barbara: Oh…er…this…this is the first meeting of the Rapture Women's Group. Er…

Mrs Di Montello: Dear Jesus…

Mrs Limnitz: Come on! Talk about our mission statement.

Barbara: The Rapture Women's Group has been founded in order to make preparations for the arrival of new citizens of Rapture, to speed the integration of their families and to preserve community spirit…

Mrs Simpson: Excellent Barbara! Well done! Now everyone, what shall our first event be? Come on, let's hear some suggestions!

Miss Freeman: What about a poker tournament?

Mrs Freeman: Adelaide! Gambling is a sin!

Mrs Di Montello: You're supposed to have left all that sin stuff back up there with the sunlight, Mary. Anyway, it's not like we have any money down here to gamble with.

Mrs Davidson: Then what would the prize be?

Mrs Fitzpatrick: I brought some flour and sugar with me when I left Dublin – maybe I could make a cake as a prize?

Mrs Di Montello: Why did you bring flour and sugar?

Mrs Fitzpatrick: You never know when it might come in handy Erica.

Mrs Di Montello: Well, when you're miles under the sea, cake-making isn't the _first _activity that springs to mind.

Mrs Simpson: That's enough ladies.

Barbara: Yes that's enough. Diane, a cake would be a very nice idea as a prize.

Mrs Limnitz: But what about eggs and milk?

Barbara: Benny tells me that they're expecting good things in the testing area. We might get our first eggs any day now!

Mrs Simpson: That settles it then. A poker tournament in the next few weeks, once eggs, milk and butter become available for the prize. Now, onto the next item on the agenda. We know there's a new set of families coming into Rapture in about a month – the treatment centre is receiving its first batch of medical professionals…

Mrs Di Montello: Thank you Lord! I'd had it up to here with Kristjana and her first aid kits! I miss aspirin almost as much as Stevie misses my homemade lasagne!

Mrs Davidson: She does her best Erica.

Mrs Di Montello: She's a cold fish, that's what she is. Nope, I don't like her one bit. Giving me shifty looks the whole time.

Miss Freeman: Does she really?

Mrs Freeman: Adelaide! Gossip-mongering does not become a young Christian lady.

Mrs Di Montello: You hush up, Mary Freeman!

Mrs Simpson: Erica, if you can't behave I'm going to have to ask you to leave the meeting. This is not showing very good community spirit!

Mrs Di Montello: Fine, _fine_, I'm _sorry_. I'll just sit tight for the rest of the meeting, okay?

Mrs Simpson: Good. Well, if we're getting eggs and milk soon, and my Rupert says they're getting close to being able to synthesize sugar, we might have a little party when our new friends arrive! We can have the children make some decorations and perhaps if we have a few musicians among us we can have a dance…Does anyone play?

Barbara: I used to play the piano when I was a girl…

Mrs Di Montello: We don't have a piano down here.

Mrs Simpson: Erica!

Mrs Di Montello: Oh Christ! Fine, I'm sitting tight. Don't worry about me.

Miss Freeman: Daddy brought his saxophone…

Mrs Freeman: The Good Lord only knows why he brought that devil instrument!

Mrs Simpson: Mary, do you think Julius would be amenable to giving us a few tunes on the night?

Mrs Freeman: Er, yes, yes, I'm sure that would be fine…

Mrs Simpson: Excellent, excellent. If anyone else would like to offer theirs or their husband's services for the welcome party, do tell me so that I can look through what little sheet music we have and find something suitable. Well! I would say this has been a very successful meeting, wouldn't you say chairwoman?

Barbara: Um…yes, yes it has. I think we've accomplished a lot today. Thank you everybody.


End file.
